


Pigeon Song

by asemic



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Food Issues, Gen, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22419661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asemic/pseuds/asemic
Summary: John Irving lives and is home. How did he live is the wrong question to ask.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	Pigeon Song

When hungry, when gaunt and lean with cavernous spaces between his ribs, John dreamed of feasts. He tore meat from the bone with greasy, greedy fingers then drank the congealed fatty pools clinging to the plate. Now faced with a roasted bird of his very own he hovered with a knife and fork in a rictus grip. They expectantly waited for him to eat. They should have known by now he only ate alone. 

He preferred to eat in silence without the vigorous glee he so imagined. Anyone may confuse him for a Holy Man, an ascetic while he stripped the breast from the carcass. Efficient and systematic. The meat he divided into sections before swallowing them down in the order he grew accustomed. Fatty thigh then wiry breast. The smaller bones he tossed into the fire cracked and spit. Too soon after his meal roiled in his gut, the bird pecking and clawing its way back up. 

They hid the unpleasantness from the reporting. They left much from the eyes of the public, nearly as much as they left behind. Now John hid this mess from the nurse. Out the curtained window and into the soil under the holly bush with its sharp, waxy leaves. To think they offered him a place by the sea in the hope the salted air may do him some good. Rather than agree with the physicians and father, John pushed from their stifling grip. They believed they knew best, but the ocean with its ebb and flow existed to mock him. The ocean, they did not see, condemned and controlled too many based on its whims. He requested trees and ferns and plants so they provided a rented house with a garden space for his convalescence.

God froze paradise into jagged fangs of glass. God ground His wonders into shards of rocks sticking up like bones in a pot. But John blinked the bleaching fields green, the cold air unfolded into perfume and crushed pines. Broken hair no longer pulled like hay but a storm of petals; their limbs stretched into vines to traverse the earth with ease. Sometimes he walked with his eyes closed to crush grass. 

When he was bed bound they left the windows open but the curtains shut. His eyes ached and the scent of bitter green grass laughed at him. So close, but he could not break it. 

How did you live, they asked. The right question was how did you live with red hands? Because the hands were the first to be hidden. 

_How do you live?_

**Morning:**

Beef tea to stimulate the appetite, physican’s requirement.  
Oatmeal or cracker gruel to ease the body into digestion, nurse’s choice.

**Afternoon:**

Broiled beef steak, tenderized for easy digestibility, based upon physician's requirements; beet greens, well-buttered and seasoned with salt and pepper, chef and nurse’s choice; tea or hot lemonade, John’s decision. 

**Supper:**

Steamed halibut with drawn butter sauce and hard-boiled eggs; asparagus, buttered with shucked peas or chopped onions, nurse’s recommendation. 

**Dessert:**

Tapioca jelly, plain. 

All eaten alone, in silence. His throat closed around the beef tea, but they did not hear his requests for anything but. The slices of broiled beef steak he choked down like he did when surrounded by emptiness, the cold and blank faces. We will be forgiven for our survival, he said. By whom? 

He requested steamed halibut for every meal the next day. He received sweetbread and liver. 

The soil received its offering once more. 

_How do you do?_

He loved the garden. 

For too long they kept him inside with a multitude of excuses. The air too chill, the air too moist, the sun too bright-the-the-the. Their voices skipped in his ear like he hiccuped his way through Carnivale, further adding to an unflattering portrait of a man with a pair of wings strapped to his back. 

John asked for permission in a trembling childlike voice. If they wished him to beg he would. And he did because a man removed from his reason and choice became a dog whining for scraps. When his pleas were pushed aside he raised his voice and grew agitated. Never before did he yell or slam his fist in anger. But eventually a dog bore his teeth to tear into what stood before him. Finally, his father demanded him determined strong enough to leave his confinement. The physician bowed his head and John hid his fangs. 

Nothing would give his wheelchair following nursie greater pleasure than a stumble during his circuit. If he had the strength it’d be wrenched apart then scattered as a memorial to his body’s failings. His goal: to walk the garden without pause or aid. You are lucky, John Irving. Some men couldn’t walk with their foot bones polished against the rocks. Against the pot. 

Nothing overwhelmed him more than seeing greens and purples burst forth from the ground. After his walks he stood nude before the mirror to trace his bare skin while remembering how the flora painted his body. The only colors they saw, the only variations in the landscape breaking the bleached bone ground and smudged grey sky belonged to their bodies. 

Lavender, clover, sorrel, and sage once crawled across his torso and limbs. Now he saw raised pink scars and ruddy skin; dark trails and tufts of hair. John selfishly counted his ten toes and ten fingers then wiggled them like a newborn. The stiffness in his joints since subsided and he extended his arms before him. The piano in the parlor may soon do more than take space-

He loved his hands.

John expelled a stream of beef tea and grey lumps onto the floor. He could not hide this from either nurse or maid. So he sat crossed legged and watched the bile carry along the grooves and gaps between the boards. 

Wolf. 

He drew his knees to his chest and waited to be discovered. 

_How?_

He demanded the piano be removed from the home; instead they placed it behind screens then locked the door.

The nurse pushed him along the grounds, the wheels thumping along the ruts between the cobbles. A bit too much excitement, the doctor determined, led to a relapse in both body and constitution. So his father sat with him more than usual or pushed him-not through the garden but to eat. To eat. When John waved five healthy, untalented fingers across the full plate he saw only disappointment. 

The vegetables then though they were coated in beef broth. His father fed him as he did his mother when she took ill. As the ship’s surgeon did when they were discovered. Little bites with painful, elderly-like jaws. His belly churned and he felt glass slide through his system, wept through the spasms. They all did though only John called out to his friends before they were chucked out into the water. 

No meat, he could not say. His father speared a small square of veal so John opened his mouth. 

_Did you live?_

Do you want to live? 

Not like this, but he still breathed and God willed him forward. And he’d crawl until he drew his last. So he steeled himself and accepted the rock and crushed the bone for want of the marrow. 

Do you want to live?

John knew who would be next, but still they drew lots. George snapped his short. 

Do you want to live?

Wolf. A wolf. They were men, men not wolves. But their hands were red and mouths stained bloody. 

Do you want to live?

He followed the moonlight through the halls. A wise man would bundle himself against the chill, but he felt like neither. Yet man thought of nature when separated from the self. The green garden looked slick under the moon, the leaves heavy with fatigue. Perhaps plants slept. Folding his stiff limbs under him John held his face to the moon and waited to learn the answer. 

_You?_

They hid such unpleasantness from him. Letters, accusations. Mouths opened wide and vomited all sorts of dreadful rumors. All true, John screamed with his sticky pudding lips sealed shut. But sometimes John wrote back. His hand trembled across the page while he dragged the black words from his pen. They could have come from a man without a complete set of working fingers in how they hesitated. Their fearful, uncertain skips and pauses. 

We wanted to live. 

Each letter, each stroke, each apology. One sentence repeated across reams of bleached skin colored paper. 

We wanted to live. 

John fed them to the fire one by one. 

_To live? Did you?_

The rumors. 

His father asked while they parted the early morning fog. Dew clung to the grass and leaves, the beads sweeter than nectar. He caught some drops with the very tips of his ten working fingers and sucked the salted metal taste of the beef tea away. 

The rumors, John. 

Do plants understand the sun?

The rumors, John. Tell me. 

When his father held him John raised his face to the light. 

_To you!_

Violets studded her hair. John insisted and mother obeyed. Such a beautiful woman with her dainty fingers folded between his while they danced. She lost her slippers so her feet left bloody trails, but she never faltered in her steps. Mother, never anything but; John, never anything. 

His vision spiraled and they danced. When she spun her skirts flapped like butterfly wings and the wind whistled through the holes in her chest. All hearts looked the same, all livers the same though the quivering, hemorrhagic masses certainly weighed different. But he never lost faith in the strength of her hands in his. They danced and she cheered her little boy with a black-lipped smile. 

But he lived! He was home! They beamed their pink lips towards him and embraced him so he did not drift. The violets fluttered in the breeze and he whistled her song. How deep are your roots? He grinned and plunged a hand in to find out. 

_Do you?_

The single white birch trembled when he tapped the bark. The puddle of ferns rippled in acknowledgment. The rose bushes hummed trying to reach for the sunlight while the leaves stretched up. John’s arms followed. He had wanted to live and now wished to thrive. 

He wandered to the window where his bush stood. Green, but in the back hid splashes of brown leaves. There were no more apologies in his chest-the brush of his fingers seemed to do nothing but snap the leaves off the branches. Their hair came out in patches, some grew blind, some deaf, those stumbling closer to God were both. John hated himself because they leaned towards his palm. Mama. Papa. Names of those they loved and knew. They curled to a palm that would soon become bloody. They were all rendered bloody. 

The bush may turn brown but there was enough green for it to flourish! He smelled the afternoon meal and felt driven to escape the house’s influence. Closer to the garden, closer to the sorrel, the sage, the rose petals, the sharp spikes of fibrous grass. The plants understood how to grow. They stretched upward and out, always reaching for the sunlight. Once you scatter the seeds wait and they’ll root. You’ll have to dig deep to destroy the roots. 

The garden knew. The lavender buds burst between his fingertips, the tender sorrel leaves smeared into a green paste against his lips, and his mouth watered. Someone shouted, _John! John you have food inside_ , but still he ate the plants.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from **Pigeon Song** by Alela Diane
> 
> Street-wise pigeon we see you  
> Camp on the sidewalk if we don't  
> Hear you anymore  
> Where did you loose your voice  
> And how did you loose the trees  
> Did they make your tangled feathers glow  
> Did they let your tattered chest flow  
> From the blatant backs of buildings  
> Where stagnate airs heat in the sun  
> From the blatant backs of buildings  
> Where stagnate airs heat in the sun  
> So we put our curtains up and ignore the sounds that break walls down  
> So we put our curtains up and ignore the sounds that break walls down  
> Break walls down  
> Do your potted plants really keep you company  
> Do your potted plants really keep you company


End file.
